Lesson 1

Lesson 1  いち －　My first Japanese learning Journal

Oct 11, 2010.

4pm to 7pm

Delayed Start

Today I finally set out to go to Kayoko's apt in Astoria for my first Japanese lesson.

We should have begun two weeks ago, but the first two times was canceled because of the weather, her eye-infection, and our busy schedules. So with the delayed of start, I feel an extra sense of eagerness of wanting to learn, which is a plus to my motivation.

The Material

Our lesson begin with learning the first couple ones of the Hiragana (a system of Japanese character writing). Kayoko gave me some really superb material (see attached). The materials has the character, a drawing, character-tracing section, character-writing section, and several examples of Japanese words/phrases which show (and prove) how the words are used in Japanese.

The drawing really is the best part, because the picture makes a connection of the sound, the character shapes, and meaning. For example, there is a character that looks like a "<". And the drawing shows a bird with its beak wide open, which forms the shape of a "<". That character is pronounced as "ku" in Japanese, so under the drawing there's a line explaining the picture as, "the chicken says 'koo-koo'" or something similar to that. 

Thinking as a teacher again

I was thinking in my mind that time how can I develop something like this for my students for studying the zhuyin symbols that are used in Taiwan for learning Mandarin. A lot of people don't prefer to teach non-native Mandarin students pinyin, which is the system used in China, because pinyin uses alphabets as symbols, and students' pre-knowledge about how those symbols should sound often affect their pronunciation. However, when students learn the Zhuyin symbols used in Taiwan, some of them feel this helps them to say the sounds better. So this is just a record of my mind switched from being a student to being an instructor.

Student having a different priority list of what should be learnt first

I also notice that for a student like me, I have a strong sense of what I want to learn. It can be a double blade knife because on the good side, I will metacognitively learn the stuff I want to learn. On the other hand, if I think the material is not something I want to learn, then I feel less interested. I am like judging a book by its cover, which can be bad. For example, when Kayoko wanted me to trace the Hiragana characters, I felt that there is no need for me to trace them, because "I can do it." I feel it is very easy to write those characters since writing them evokes the same knowledge and skill frame of writing Chinese characters, I thought. I feel such "subjective-ness" may bring negative effect if it's too over.

Teacher(Kayoko)'s politeness

My teacher is also my classmate, my friend, and a very humble person. As a result, she'd asks, "Can I show you a video?" when she wants to show me a video. I am very grateful of this. I think this makes myself to be consciously remind myself to show her the same courtesy that she has shown me.

Positive Feedback from the teacher

The first lesson was relatively easy for me because I have some familiarity with greetings in Japanese, and with the sounds and writing system. Therefore I felt very little or no frustration, and even when I cannot learn something right away, my teacher still shows that she is highly pleased with my effort, and this creates a very positive cycle of learning. I decided to put more effort and want to try to learn more, and learn quicker. I think I am, for the first time, a very ambitious students (unlike the type of students I have been...)

In terms of Learning, especially Metacognitive Learning

Just as a side note, I was telling my friend how being Metacognitive is like to be mindful in Buddhism.

I am a very metacognitive person, because I like to think for the purpose of everything.

Learning language is usually fun to me because it involves a lot of analysis, decoding, and re-construct.

Knowing 2.5 languages (Taiwanese, Mandarin, English) definitely helps a lot in learning another language, especially since Japanese is very closely related to Taiwanese and Mandarin.

For example, I learned the word "blue" yesterday. And in Japanese, the same color word is used differently in the following two types of sentences.

The house is blue.

It is a blue house.

In English the word blue remains the same whether it is in front of or after the word "house," however, in Mandarin, the usage would be different, we need to say blue-"de" house, adding a modifier to the word blue. It turns out that in Japanese it is also the same, and I was very delighted to make a connection between this and the structure in Chinese. This way I do not waste time in feeling frustrated and wonders why they are different.

I've read it somewhere before saying that bilingual students often learns that names of things are not definite. Taco can mean a type of food in Spanish yet it means octopus in Japanese. This helps them to be flexible and learn quickly. I think it is because they don't waste energy and mental power in frustration and in wondering why/how they are different, therefore they can dedicate all energy in accepting a new idea more quickly, like a stream flowing with gently with no rocks as obstacles.

What I want to try next

I am also taking Togei (Ceramics) class from a Japanese ceramic artist/teacher. I want to learn sentences that I can talk to my Togei teacher and carry out a conversation. So perhaps some words I want to learn first are color words, good, beautiful, I like what you have done... etc.

I also want to ask Kayoko to use all Japanese when she teaches me...

I am not sure if the above two things can be achieved, but I will certainly talk to my sensei (teacher) about them.